Watch Fred Armisen Try to Out-Drum ?uestlove on ‘Fallon’

Plus: Armisen and Fallon belt out nonsense together

Fred Armisen, SNL castmember, Portlandia co-mastermind, and former drummer for ’90s post-hardcore punks Trenchmouth, showed off his musical roots in a drum-off against Late Night with Jimmy Fallon bandleader ?uestlove last night. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the blowout one might expect. Armisen, a supreme music nerd who recently showed off his skin-pounding skills in hot pursuit of Jack White on an episode of Portlandia, holds his own against ?uesto, earning mad claps even as the Roots drummer gets the last laugh. All in all, an entertaining minute-and-a-half of TV.

Armisen also stopped by Fallon’s desk during his late-night talk show visit to reminisce about the pair’s history of (fictional) musical collaborations. The reunion sketch — modeled after Armisen and Kristen Wiig’s perennially unprepared SNL pop duo, Garth and Kat — features the Baby Sparrows, Fallon and Armisen’s mop-topped twosome; Nothingness, their waltzy ’80s project; and Birdsong, the pair’s soft-rock ’60s imprint, which put out an album called Tree Sap. Or was the band named Bird Tree and the record Song Sap? Doesn’t matter, just watch it below.